Collaery - Drop the charges NOW!

Written by: Timor Sea Justice Forum on 23 May 2020

Collaery - Drop the charges NOW!

Australian lawyer Bernard Collaery is being persecuted by the Australian Government for exposing Australia's scandalous role in defrauding impoverished neighbour Timor-Leste of access to and revenue from its own natural resources.

No less scandalous is its defrauding of the Australian people of revenue from helium, produced as a by-product from petroleum resources under the Timor Sea, and surreptitiously gifted to US fossil fuel monopoly Conoco-Phillips, from whom we buy it back. Perhaps most scandalous is his revelation, with former spook Witness K, of Australia's bugging of East Timorese negotiators during treaty discussions on those resources. In a recently-published book, "Oil under Troubled Water", Collaery describes Australia as a "pariah state that lacked even sufficient skill to benefit its own citizens with the proceeds of its plunder in the Timor Sea" (p. 345).

Collaery is a principled and courageous advocate for justice for the people of Timor Leste. His persecution is set to continue tomorrow in a closed Canberra court.  We reprint below the full txt of a media release from the Timor Sea Justice Forum. It's a safe bet that it will be ignored by the mainstream capitalist media.

 

Drop the charges against Bernard Colleary now!  

 

TIMOR SEA JUSTICE FORUM
IMMEDIATE
URGENT MEDIA RELEASE

 

ACT SUPREME COURT HEARINGS re BERNARD COLLAERY - CLOSED, QUESTIONABLE and DANGEROUS.

 

The Commonwealth Attorney-General continues to pursue the prosecution of former ACT Attorney-General, Mr. Bernard Collaery, despite having the power to discontinue the case.

The latest in the interminable series of hearings is set down for Monday, 25th May 2020 through to 3rd June in the ACT Supreme Court.

This hearing will be closed to the public.  A determination will be sought at the hearing for some evidence to be available only to the judge. If that ensues it would mean that the defendant would not have full access to the evidence which will be used against him. It could mean that when the trial occurs, the jury will not be allowed to hear all the evidence.

The lack of public and legal scrutiny in the proposed conduct of this trial subverts internationally accepted standards for a fair trial and the right to prepare a defence.

Australian governments have exposed their people to the international humiliation of performing an act of economic espionage against a small and impoverished neighbour––Timor-Leste. Prosecuting those who acted in good faith in bringing the truth to light is a clear indication to the rest of the world that Australia is content to both swindle the poor and persecute those who act according to their consciences.

Bernard Collaery, as lawyer for “Witness K”, has been charged with alleged breaches of the Criminal Code (Cth) and the Intelligence Services Act.  The details of these offences remain cloaked behind assertions of “national security”. However, national security has not been proved to be at stake, it has only been claimed, and it has been claimed by the very body––the Australian Government–– whose deceitful fraud is the cause of the whole debacle.

The prosecution of Bernard Collaery represents the denial of just and accepted legal norms to serve political and commercial agendas. It is further evidence that secret trials are already a feature of the increasingly fragile Australian democracy.

Authorised by Sister Susan Connelly
Timor Sea Justice Forum
susan.connelly@sosj.org.au
0498 473 341

Silencing Voices of Dissent: Australia and the Repression of Whistle-Blowers.

Scott C.                                            11 August 2019

As the Fascist Portuguese Empire collapsed due to anti-colonial rebellions in Africa and growing dissent at home, the people of Timor-Leste sought to win their Independence. However, this freedom was cut short by invasion in December 1975 by the imperialist-backed military regime of Suharto, who in 1965-6 had massacred upwards of 1 million communists and political dissidents, and invaded West Papua. Suharto subjected Timor-Leste to the same oppression that the people of Indonesia and West Papua then faced (and continue to face to this day).

Australia supported Indonesia’s invasion, as Indonesia agreed to adhere to the sea border established between Portugal and Australia over the Timor Sea, which left a vast amount of ocean territory - and with it, large supplies of oil and gas - in Australian hands. Timor-Leste would suffer massively under occupation; 300,000 people would die and many more would live under abject poverty and fear of the Indonesian military. Despite all this, the people of Timor-Leste resisted heroically, fighting their oppressors in the jungles of their homeland.

 When Timor-Leste finally gained its Independence in 2002, Australia moved in immediately to secure the country for the benefit of corporations and imperialist powers, namely the US and Japan. Australia worked tirelessly to make sure Timor-Leste remained subservient to the imperialists, and as a part of that process, ASIS (the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Australia’s foreign intelligence agency, equivalent to the US’s CIA) bugged the cabinet rooms of Timor-Leste. They planted hidden microphones to record conversations to spy on government officials of Timor-Leste, in order to be aware of the situation and have our “negotiators”, who were attempting to resolve the Timor Sea dispute in favour of Woodside Petroleum, respond accordingly.

Alexander Downer, the then Liberal Minister for Foreign Affairs under John Howard, ordered the bugging, working on behalf of Woodside, and later took a job with the company. Ashton Calvert, Liberal Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) at the time, became a director at Woodside. The Liberals really got their hands in deep with the corporations they serve this time, in order to maintain the status quo of denying a people their rightful resources.

But Labor isn’t out of the blame either. The newly-elected Labor government of Kevin Rudd worked to cover up the Liberals’ crimes in Timor-Leste, and discouraged discussion of it. Two rocks, one bird, eh? But a question remains, how do we know this happened? A former senior ASIS officer, known only as Witness K, chose not to ignore his conscience, and came out and exposed the buggings, informing the government of Timor-Leste, which promptly withdraw from the Treaty, and demanded new negotiations for an internationally recognised border, which they finally achieved in March 2018, via the UN.

After exposing the Australian governments’ crimes, Witness K was arrested for “making known state secrets” and has been under persecution in a secret trial. His lawyer, Bernard Collaery, was also arrested under the same charge. They face 2 years in the gaol. The so-called trial against Witness K and Bernard Collaery has been artificially prolonged due to the government insisting it is a matter of national security, last-minute changes and prohibitions, and the late introduction of documents that not even Collaery and K, let alone their supporting lawyers, would be allowed to see, and using national security legislation to ban Collaery from instructing his lawyers.

This prolongation is largely from the efforts of current Liberal Attorney-General Christian Porter, who also authorised the persecution of K and Collaery. Porter’s tactics in refusing to allow Collaery to instruct his lawyers have been so appalling that they drew a rebuke from the presiding magistrate that “a finger needs to be pulled out to make it happen as quickly as possible.”

Porter’s delay strategy has exerted pressure on Collaery’s own legal practice. He has not been able to take anything other than minor cases while he is being prosecuted. It has had a detrimental effect on K’s health. K has been under extraordinary pressure for over 6 years, having been placed under surveillance along with Collaery by Labor’s Mark Dreyfus, the then Attorney-General of Australia, in 2013, while also being raided by ASIO and the AFP and then having his passport confiscated, and, despite ASIO claiming to have no concerns about K, not returning it to them.

K’s appeal against that vindictive decision by DFAT was halted, interestingly enough, by the prosecution. Then came last year’s prosecution, 5 years after the alleged leaking of information about ASIS’ illegal activities.

When the court case opened on August 6, Witness K indicated he would plead guilty to a summary offence, one breach of section 39 of the Intelligence Services Act for communicating secret information obtained in the course of his duties as an Australian Secret Intelligence Service agent.

Collaery (above) said he had “great empathy for Witness K and the struggle has gone through spiritually, mentally and physically”. He said Witness K had “reached a conclusion he needs to exit the process” after “six years of seclusion, harassment and questioning”.

Collaery, however, would fight on. He said the case had revealed a “cheating culture motivated by commercial interests” which was both “contrary to Australia’s national security interests” and unlawful.

Collaery said he was charged with “speaking to five journalists after my chambers were raided and my brief seized”, labelling the case “a likely turning point on … true freedom of expression against abuses of power”.

Collaery said the prosecution was “a very determined push to hide dirty political linen … under the guise of national security imperatives”.

He said he felt capable of fighting the charges, saying "I'm from Wollongong. I grew up playing in the mud and there's going to be a lot thrown back soon."

This is not the first time Australia has silenced its critics. In 2015, the Federal Parliament passed the Australian Border Force Act of 2015, which silenced whistle-blowers who exposed the horrific conditions of people living in Australia’s concentration camps on Manus Island and Nauru. Then came the AFP raids on journalists at the ABC and News Corporation’s Annika Smethurst. There is also the case begun in June against Australian Taxation Office whistleblower Richard Boyle who faces six life sentences if convicted. He had revealed many instances of unethical and unprofessional conduct by the ATO directed at taxpayers. This repression is wholly unjustified.

We call on all Australians who believe in the right of Peoples to determine their own futures, who believe in the right for people to expose the crimes of a government, who believe our government should pay for its crimes, to support the immediate throwing out of this case, and to release Witness K and Bernard Collaery immediately.
 

More information can be found at the Australia-East Timor Friendship Association: http://aetfa.org.au/

Our Party supports freedom for Witness K, Bernard Collaery, and all whistle-blowers and political prisoners both here in Australia and Internationally!
Freedom for all Political Prisoners and Whistle-blowers!

Support the Independence of Timor-Leste!

End the Indonesian Occupation of West Papua!

Prosecute those responsible for Crimes against the People of Timor-Leste!

Close the Camps!
 

Filthy rich miners rob the poorest

Vanguard February 2013
Jack D.

(Above: Woodside gas rig in the Tinor Sea)

Wealth delayed is wealth denied. The multi-billions of dollars being denied Timor Leste by some of the world’s richest and filthiest mining companies is a murderous crime against the Timorese people, who are among the world’s poorest of nations.

It is denying thousands of Timorese adequate health care, infant care, aged care, education, housing and the like. Many, many lives are being lost, the future for thousands of children is deliberately being limited as the greedy companies maximise profits.

The amount owing to East Timor, or Timor Leste as it is known in the country, could be as much as $US 3 billion, once interest and penalties are added to the unpaid taxes.

“As of today if they do not provide us all the justification, there’s a potentiality of [it] going up to $3 billion,” East Timor Finance Minister Emilia Pires said.

A forensic audit of tax payments over the past 18 months has found what the government claims are multiple underpayments of tax by the resource companies. These companies include the US oil giant ConocoPhillips and Australia's own Woodside Petroleum.

“Since we started auditing - and we only started auditing in the beginning of 2011, so within a year and a half since then to now - we've recovered or collected about $362 million,” Ms Pires said.

Only in 2010 did East Timor get the right to have the financial records of the oil and gas companies operating in the Timor Sea held in Dili. It was a year later that a specialised tax task force was put together in the nation’s finance ministry to begin forensic auditing investigations. It then began uncovering just how much money the nation is potentially owed in unpaid taxes.

Of the dozens of cases of tax underpayment so far discovered, 28 have been settled for a total of $362 million. Several of the companies involved are appealing in the Dili District Court against the tax reassessments of the East Timorese government.

Fraud and theft in maximising profit

In cases now before the Dili District Court, lawyer Pierre Prosper, for the Timor Leste government, has submitted that companies have “improperly deducted costs” from taxes due to the government.

“Around the world multinational companies always fight for their interests and they fight tooth and nail; it’s their job - they have shareholders,” Mr Prosper said.

“There was no enforcement because there wasn't capacity, so it was up to the companies to do the job of following the letter of the law.

“What we are saying is that we noticed some deficiencies and... the government has begun to push back, enforce and regulate.”

Timorese fight back against mining con-men

Mr Prosper said, “We expect the fight to get even harder, because we're talking about a lot of money, but what's changed here is that Timor is fighting back.”

The task before the audit team is enormous, trawling back through five years of tax returns and financial documents, looking for illegitimate claims. Ms Pires explains the type of problems they are seeing with many of the companies’ tax returns.

“When we are doing an audit we are asking them, ‘OK show us the receipts, tell us if you say that this cost you, just as an example $100 million, then give me the receipts for $100 million’ and they're struggling,” she said.

“They’re not able to give us... the total cost of what they said they claim that they’ve spent. Now that’s a bit of a problem.”

Recently re-elected East Timor Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao agrees that the companies need to pay their dues. “I believe that companies will be aware that they have to pay, and under the rules, under the laws they have to pay the tax,” Mr Gusmao said.

Support East Timorese against these thieves

We, in Australia need to take action against these thieving mining companies. We know from our own experience just how rapacious these bastards can be. Wherever there is any opportunity at all, we should expose this bastardry of the miming companies involved in ripping off Timor Leste with demonstrations, marches, sit-ins and other forms of action.